Harvard Challenges Academic Publishing Cartel

The Guardian -- "Exasperated by rising subscription costs charged by academic publishers, Harvard University has encouraged its faculty members to make their research freely available through open access journals and to resign from publications that keep articles behind paywalls. A memo from Harvard Library to 2,100 teaching and research staff called for action after warning it could no longer afford the price hikes imposed by many large journal publishers, which bill the library $3.75m a year.The extraordinary move thrusts one of the world's wealthiest and most prestigious institutions into the center of an increasingly fraught debate over access to the results of academic research, much of which is funded by the taxpayer. The outcome of Harvard's decision to take on the publishers will be watched closely by major universities around the world and is likely to prompt others to follow suit.The memo from Harvard's faculty advisory council said major publishers had created an "untenable situation" at the university by making scholarly interaction "fiscally unsustainable" and "academically restrictive", while drawing profits of 35% or more. Prices for online access to articles from two major publishers have increased 145% over the past six years, with some journals costing as much as $40,000, the memo said.More than 10,000 academics have already joined a boycott of Elsevier, the huge Dutch publisher, in protest at its journal pricing and access policies. Many university libraries pay more than half of their journal budgets to the publishers Elsevier, Springer and Wiley."

from Edward Fullbrook The world campaign to stop the annual siphoning of billions of dollars of taxpayer and charitable funds from research and education into the coffers of Elsevier, Springer and Wiley reached a major threshold yesterday. A memo from Harvard‘s faculty advisory council to the university’s 2,100 teaching and research staff called upon them [...]

Something told John Bohannon that Grace Groovy was not a real editor at a real medical journal. It may have been her name, her bad spelling or her messy punctuation.
But there was Groovy’s email, offering to publish an untrue and retracted piece of medical research as if it were valid — for cash up front and no questions asked.

BlendleThe startup that calls itself the "iTunes of journalism" is coming to the US in 2016 to bring down the paywall — and possibly even give high-quality journalism a chance at surviving the digital age.

A major publisher of scholarly medical and science articles has retracted 43 papers because of “fabricated” peer reviews amid signs of a broader fake peer review racket affecting many more publications.

Canada’s two most-read medical journals contain up to five times as much pharmaceutical advertising as major journals in other countries, concludes a new study that urges the publications to eschew drug-company promotion entirely.
Evidence suggests the ads undermine the publications’ credibility, provide questionable advice to doctors and can actually skew the content of articles, the authors argue.
They say revenue lost from advertising could be replaced with higher subscription rates, which physicians would be easily able to afford.

from Edward Fullbrook The Academic Spring has seen four major developments in the last 32 hours. The United Kingdom government announced that by 2014 all publicly funded scientific research papers would be immediately available for anyone to read for free. This is being called “the most radical shakeup of academic publishing since the invention of [...]